Untitled

Competence, Resilience, and Development 41ous situations. General assets are associated with good outcomes in youth undermost conditions; outcomes are generally better when a youth has two parents, betterparenting, lives in a decent neighborhood and attends a good school, and hasnormal cognitive abilities. Protective factors refer to influences that play a specialrole under risky conditions. Parental monitoring, for example, may be generallya good idea, but it can be crucial in a dangerous neighborhood. Some protectivefactors, more like automobile airbags, are important only during emergencies, suchas emergency shelters for teenagers.There are also different models of how all the components involved in resiliencemay work to produce resilience (Masten, 2001). Some models focus onpeople: Some investigators have identified resilient versus maladaptive youth andthen compared them with each other and with low-risk youth, to try to figure outwhat makes a difference. In contrast to these person-focused approaches, investigatorshave also used variable-focused approaches with multivariate statistics tostudy the relation among the measured qualities of people, their relationships, andtheir environments. Investigators have tested models with additive effects and withinteractions. They have proposed mediating effects to try to identify when andwhere key processes are occurring. Investigators have asked, for example: Hasthe Midwestern farm crisis (Elder & Conger, 2000) or the Great Depression (Elder,1999) affected adolescents primarily through its effects on their parents (e.g.,depression, irritability, or marital conflict undermine parenting quality, which leadsto problems in children), more directly (e.g., not enough food, changing jobs oreducational opportunities), or in some combination of these ways, as often observedwith such profound historical events?The Short List and Its Implications for ResilienceDespite the diversity of risks and populations studied, the varying definitions ofpositive adaptation, and the inconsistencies and controversies in the resilienceliterature, the findings have been remarkably consistent in implicating a set ofcorrelates and predictors of resilience in young people (Luthar, 2003, 2006;Masten, 2001, 2004; Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Masten & Powell, 2003). Thus,it is possible to comprise a reasonably stable “short list” of assets and protectivefactors associated with resilience (Masten, 2001, 2004; Masten & Coatsworth,1998; Masten & Reed, 2002; Wright & Masten, 2004). This list in various formstypically includes the following correlates of resilience: decent parents or effectiveparenting, connections to other competent and caring adults, problem-solvingskills, self-regulation skills, positive self-perceptions, beliefs that life has meaningor hopefulness, spirituality or religious affiliations, talents valued by self orsociety, socioeconomic advantages, community effectiveness and safety, and, foradolescents, connections to prosocial and competent peers.This list of consistently observed correlates of resilience under diverse conditionssuggests the operation of fundamental adaptive systems in human development that